Eternal Playgrounds of the Muddy Kind

Camp Bestival, July 18-20, Ludlow Castle

Having had to put ice packs on my knees after the last couple of nights out dancing I figured my festival days may have been over. But as luck would have it this is Britain and in Britain there are now over 400 festivals each year around the country with something for everyone: the massive scale of 50000 at the rock and dance of Glastonbury to boutique festivals catering for niche musical tastes from psychedelic trance to World music. And so it was that I found myself taking a day off work to embark on a road trip with Mz Polska, who brought chocolate, and Mz Electra, who made muffins, heading south to the Dorset coast and three days of Camp Bestival.

There are many things I wish I knew then, as we innocently slide down the hierarchy of roads, from the Ms to the As to the Bs, leaving the safety and comfort of London behind and entering shadowy narrow lanes with only hedges to protect us from rampaging badgers, mad cows and other Narnia stories. First, never leave home without tights. Camping in England, even in summer, is fecking freezing and the Australian festival uniform of miniskirt and singlet is just not going to keep a girl warm. A puffy vest or several layers of cotton are minimum. At least I had the de rigeur festival wellingtons for the one day it rained. It's an unusual experience, dancing in wellingtons and a fleece jacket at one in the morning. The last time I remember being dressed like this was hosing down the dairy yard in winter, although the boots were work standard black instead of blue paisley, so the weekend was already becoming surreal without any chemical enhancement.

The second fright was the sheer number of kids. Of the ten thousand tickets sold it seems 3500 were bought for children by clearly irresponsible parents. OK it had been billed as a family friendly festival but surely not that friendly! It’s not that I dislike kids. I’m auntie to dozens of them by now. But there are some things that should never be seen or heard at a festival including conversations that go ‘so who needs to poo? George do you need to poo? OK let’s get in the queue so you can poo’. And nappies being changed on the chill out lounges! That is just so wrong! And how many times in one weekend can you hear the words ‘Trixie, you apologise. Apologise now’. The deterioration of parenting over the weekend mapped the decline of civilisation, from the democratic, ‘now Bobby, I know you’re only two but let’s discuss why you don’t want to eat strawberries for breakfast’, to fascist authoritarian, ‘Bobby eat your strawberries and we’re leaving now’, by the end of it. Although having a baby on your shoulders in the mosh with cute little baby ear protectors on I admit brought out whole new ideas on the possibilities of motherhood!

It wasn’t just the hordes of kids that might induce a feeling of otherworldiness. Asking the 18 year olds who the DJ is is never a good sign, or worse in the chorus when you don’t know the lyrics and everyone around is singing them.

Mz Kitty: ‘What are they singing? ‘Just Divine’?

Mz Polska: ‘Justify?’

Mz Electra: ‘Just a boy?’

The great thing about being old though is that we have independent incomes and can afford Blackberrys (well, at least Mz Polska can) and can look up the lyrics in the car on the way home. ‘Just a band’. Thank you Scroobius Pip.

I’ve also realised now why so many of my students have attention spans shorter than my three minute pop song version of retention. Exposure to a frenetic DJ Yoda who apparently has an attention disorder and can’t leave a song on the turn table for more than 30 seconds before he has to mix in something new would probably do it.

Like trying to dance to DJ Yoda it takes a while to get into the rhythm of a festival. Despite all the frenetic activity there were surprisingly quiet moments. The mornings began being woken by Gracie, Maisie, Tamsin or Pagan’s mother’s at 7am asking the same question … ‘do you need to poo?’. I head for the showers to get us tickets so we can get in the queue later, then we head for the Magic Meadow to chill out in the sun with coffee and wait for the Hurly Burly Veg Café to open for breakfast. Then out would come the knitting needles and nothing much would happen for a couple of hours except the jumper would get longer and we’d workshop the problems of the world in the chai tent. Then slowly performances start in the Comedy tent, the Flamingo Bar opens, the jousting begins, the bands and djs start up. And by 4pm the familiar doof of speaker stacks becomes the tempo for the rest of the evening and into the night. By 12pm in reverse order, music from the bands on the mainstage would dissipate until it was just the djs in the dance tent still going and even they would eventually switch off and the food tents close down (except the Hog Roast which I think kept going 24/7 and saw off at least a few hundred pigs over the course of the weekend) and people drifted out to watch lanterns floating up to the full moon and then drifted off to find their bed among the sea of tents. It was always going to be a bit problematic to find a tent at night among 5000 others that pretty much all looked the same.

Unfortunately by the time you get into the swing of things you have to come home, so I've decided that festivals should be compulsory under the NHS. We need these 'demented playgrounds' (the Gelitin Collective). Where else can you dress up for a weekend; stand in front of Billy Bragg in the coffee queue (I love you Billy just in case you're reading); discover Kate Nash is a knitter as well so i'm not such a dag after all; and rethink that idea of a career in Burlesque, especially when it’s served with champagne and cream scones. We’ve separated the spiritual into religious institutions and play into commercialised clubs, chemically enhanced ballrooms and the marketed coolness of MTV. So why not create space for real ‘demented play’ in the ordinary rhythms of life? Why not dress up everyday in what you really want to wear? Why not spend time drinking chai and discussing politics with complete strangers in a tea tent every day? Why not drink champers in the afternoon wearing your knickers and pasties (okay i did spend a bit of time in the burlesque tent)? Why not get dirty playing in mud? Why not dance everyday, just for five minutes?

Speaking of dancing, you would note if a regular reader of this blog that a wee accident in July had damaged one knee so the plan for the festival was, I reassured my imaginary doctor, that I would sit quietly and listen. There would be no pogo’ing or any other form of bodily movement that could in the smallest sense be described as dance, not even if someone was playing Drum and Bass. No, most definitely not. It’s amazing how at the age of 41 I can still live in denial. So the knee has had a little setback in getting better and there should be no dancing now until at least …. Notting Hill Carnival in August.